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Creative Management, Entrepreneurship and Business Planning In The Film and Entertainment Industry

A 3 day workshop

This workshop examines the challenge of CREATIVTY, managing creative talent and developing and capturing best value from ideas and material. Case studies will include Pixar, The King’s Speech and developing stories with Terry Gilliam and Neil LaBute. The programme then examines how to thrive as an entrepreneur in the disrupted, digital market, and helps filmmakers with BUSINESS models and business planning in detail.

NOTE : No project is required to enroll on this programme. Support and mentoring, however, for business planning is potentially available beyond the programme.

Management and business course structure:

Thursday 7th December

9.30 Welcome and introductions.

Each of the cohort members share their background, goals for the course, and brief details of their business plans they want to discuss in more detail later in the course (not complusory).

10.30 Coffee break.

10.50 Film Value Chain as a business model – an analysis of all the steps from development to exploitation that a producer needs to navigate. This will include creative packaging.

12.00 Lunch.

1.00 Creativity : The world of ideas, idea generation, blue sky thinking and incubator systems. What works well, and what fails to produce value from indiviudals, groups, companies and organizations ?

2.00 Creative management:How to work with creative people most effectively. What motivates creatives ? What kills creativity ? How do we capture value from creatives ? To include PIXAR case study.

3.20 Coffee break

3.40 Class exercise: Firing a writer/director…Each person in the group becomes either a producer or a writer…

4.30 End.

Friday 8th December

9.30 Tracking back on what was discussed the first day and key areas the cohort want me to focus on in more detail today.

10.00 Project management in film and small screen production.An analysis of different roles, strategies and examples of strong and weak project management, with international case studies, including The King’s Speech.

12.00 Lunch

1.00 Creative elements in film marketing : The still photography, the poster, the trailer, the on- line campaign and working with festivals and sales companies.

2.30 Business Models – traditional and digital approaches to throwing off cash and generating turn-over. How entrepreneurs work in this area.

3.30 Coffee break.

3.50 New Business modelling : The distrupted value chain and how producers can capture value from new systems and for strategies going forwards.

4.30 End.

Saturday 9th December

9.30 Business Planning : Identifying why, what, who for, when and how. A detailed session that examines structure, sections, and key financial assumptions and information.

11.00 Break.

11.20 Business planning continued.

12.00 Lunch.

1.00 The art of Negotiation.

2.00 The art of The Pitch.

3.00 Break.

3.30 Wrap and discussion about how each member of the cohort can use the programme going forwards, and how Angus Finney can support producers/entrepreneurs re plans etc.

4.30 End.

Lecturers

Angus Finney is a leading international film and creative industry specialist who has managed, taught, mentored and lectured across the world. His work includes MBA-level teaching at The Judge Business School, Cambridge University, where he is a Fellow, and MA-level Course Directing at London Film School/Exeter University. He was appointed in 2016 to the Beijing Film Academy as a Visiting Professor, and was appointed in March 2017 to the School of Humanities, Exeter University, as an Associate Professor in Film Business Studies.

Finney was the manager of Europe’s only Production Finance Market over the past decade, hosted by Film London annually. The market has supported independent financing of more than 100 films over since 2007. His work has recently included acting as a government expert witness in two high profile cases, including the £1bn tax tribunal involving Ingenious Media and HMRC; and has served as an expert witness on a private film finance dispute in Guernsey.

His UK training includes working with Creative Skillset, Creative England, Film Agency Wales, Film London and the Film Distributors Association; and his professional development work has extended to South Africa, Ireland, UAE, Canada, China and New Zealand over the past five years. Finney also has considerable practical entrepreneurial and management experience: He was appointed joint Managing Director of Renaissance Films, a UK-based development, production, finance and sales company in July 1999. During six years of business, Finney Executive Produced a range of films, working with filmmakers such as Terry Gilliam, Daniel Craig, Neil LaBute, Marleen Gorris, Roger Michell, Glen Close, and Rose Troche, alongside leading US studios including Sony, Miramax, Warner Bros and Paramount. He took over sole MD responsibilities in 2002 before the company ceased trading in July 2005. He has also mentored EU film companies on business strategy and planning.

Finney’s fourth and most recent book is: The International Film Business – A Market Guide Beyond Hollywood (Routledge) was published in May 2010. A second edition has been published in October 2014, and has been released in China and Japan. His 1996 publication The State of European Cinema has been re-printed by Bloomsbury in 2016. His second title was The Egos Have Landed: The Rise and Fall of Palace Pictures (1996). Finney has personally trained more than 1000 film producers/writers and directors, company executives and students since 2005, and delivered master classes and lectures at Berlin and Cannes film festivals, Judge/Cambridge, Cass/City, Grenoble, London University, the Sorbonne, Paris, and the Copenhagen Business School.

Finney has a PhD in Management from Cass Business School, City University London. He has an MA in Film (Documentary specialism) and Journalism from New York University, a post-graduate Diploma from City University in Newspaper Journalism and a BA from Sussex University in International Relations.